Strangers for family : gifts, reciprocity, and kinship in Caddoan-Euroamerican relations, 1685-1835

Abstract

Prior to regular contact with Europeans, the Caddoans created a complex, hierarchical, and highly organized society which participated in a far-flung trade with other native peoples. As they came into contact with other Indians, the Caddoans' kin-ordered mode of production allowed them to incorporate these strangers and their goods into Caddoan society. In their lands in what became Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, the Caddoans often adopted foreign ideas, tools, and goods and then adapted them to Caddoan ways. With the coming of the French and Spanish after 1685, Caddoan society found itself under tremendous pressures, such as a dependency on manufactured goods and population loss from disease and increased warfare. The Caddoans found that their kin-ordered mode of production worked equally as well with Europeans. For successful diplomacy and trade, Europeans found they had to work within this Caddoan system in which gift-exchange established fictive and affinal kinships. From these kinships, the Caddoans expected the Europeans to uphold a host of reciprocal obligations, such provide loyalty, advice, protection, and of course, more gifts of valuable manufactured goods. As long as the Europeans needed these native peoples as military allies and as trade partners who provided hides and horses for their mercantilist empires, the Caddoans could remain politically and economically independent. Still, loss of land as well as population decreases from disease and warfare forced alterations in Caddoan society. Despite these changes, the Caddoans continually chose traditionally Caddoan ways to deal with them. Though Caddoan communities coalesced, they maintained their class, lineage, and leadership systems. Only with the coming of United States and the advent of agricultural capitalism did the Caddoans find themselves losing their political and economic independence. Rather than hides, Americans desired Caddoan land, so they pushed them off the land. In 1835, the United States government forced the Caddoans to cede their land in Louisiana and move west.